Lindsay Fox recognises no boundaries in battle of the beach

Royce Millar and Chris Vedelago

How much is enough for billionaire trucking mogul Lindsay Fox? It is a question many Victorians have asked since The Sunday Age last week revealed how the transport tycoon had claimed a swath of Point King beach as his own private domain.

Yet the addition of 2400 square metres of public beach to his existing 16,000-square-metre cliff-front property appears not to have sated the one-time truck driver's appetite for Portsea land. A dispute with a neighbour reveals Mr Fox's determination for more.

In the 30 years since the powerful business figure bought his first Portsea block, he has amassed the largest and most valuable holding in the area, and one of the biggest in urban Victoria.

Local real estate experts put the land value alone at upwards of $30 million.

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But one neighbouring block continues to upset the clean boundary line of the Fox property. It belongs to Melissa Brown, a member of a long-standing Portsea family. Facing a range of family health challenges, Ms Brown put the property on the market last year - with an asking price believed to be about $3.4 million - but rejected an offer from Fox. Soon after, the gate that had allowed the Browns access to the beach, via a decades-old path through the Fox property, was locked. Then, in mid-December, Fox applied to the local Mornington Peninsula shire to remove the easement entirely, a move which, if successful, would forever deny beach access to the owners of the block on Point Nepean Road.

The Browns have since taken their property off the market, pending the outcome of the council's decision on the easement. In documents lodged with the council objecting to the removal of the easement, Ms Brown insists she regularly uses the walkway through the Fox property to get to the beach in the same way she and her parents had for many years.

No way: A locked gate bars the beach access through Lindsay Fox's property.

Her objection describes the easement as a ''significant property asset''; local real estate figures have confirmed the removal of the path would slash the value of the Brown property, which does not enjoy its own beachfront access.

So too would removal of the easement increase the likelihood of the devalued Brown property being sold to Fox, whose surrounding estate has ample beach access.

The easement has been in place since 1968 and initially allowed beach access to the owners of five properties neighbouring Merrylands Avenue in Portsea. Over time Mr Fox has bought up all of those lots, bar one, and now surrounds the remaining block owned by the Browns.

Lindsay Fox at Portsea. Photo: Justin McManus

Both the Foxes and Browns have refused to comment for this story.

Nearby resident and Fox's local nemesis Kate Baillieu has long campaigned for public access to the Sorrento and Portsea beaches.

She says that ensuring the wider public's enjoyment of the beach was an important consideration for many of the early, privileged landowners of Portsea and Sorrento.

Illustration: Matt Golding.

''They felt they were just custodians and had a much more generous view about sharing this beautiful part of the coastline. They actually gave land to the Crown to ensure the public would have easy and safe access to the beaches.''

Details of the row over Fox's attempt to buy the Brown land have emerged after The Sunday Age reported on a controversial Christmas Eve decision by the Victorian Titles Office to extend the boundary of the Fox property by 45 metres onto Point King beach.

Official documents show that after years of Fox pressure and legal threats, the Titles Office finally accepted the ''doctrine of accretion'' in relation to Mr Fox's property. The old legal principle means that when sand builds up on a beach - as it has at Point King beach - landowners can apply to have their title extended as the high-water mark recedes.

Public land experts have since argued that the doctrine of accretion only applies when the movement of sand was natural, not a result of human activity.

Portsea residents have varying views on what has caused the build-up, with some blaming the build-up on Point King beach on the Queenscliff ferry or channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay. Others believe it has been the natural result of the tide and currents. After a strident response last Sunday, and a promise of urgent retrospective legislation to overturn the Titles Office decision, Planning Minister Matthew Guy has since been more careful in his comments. Retrospective legislation appears unlikely.

On Thursday, Mr Guy told Fairfax Media the government was considering a number of ways to ''provide clarity for Victorians'' over the Fox boundary and its implications for the wider Victorian coastline.

''There are a whole range of issues to consider from title boundaries to legal risk … we are confident we will find a good solution,'' he said.

Fox had argued for 17 years that the property line of his compound should be extended onto Point King beach. Over that time he installed bollards, a lawn, trees, hedges and security cameras to mark his boundary.

But what constitutes the bay's edge has been a murky issue, and previous governments had rejected the Fox position.

In 2000, the trucking magnate told The Age he would never stop fighting for what was rightfully his. ''As far as I'm concerned, what's mine is mine and I will fight for it all the way,'' he said. ''I will not stop.''